Saturday morning: We take off for Astoria and walk around. En route, we realize we forgot to bring a hoodie, so we pull into Longview. Wait is that a rummage sale? Wait are those aguas frescas? We stop by. No hoodie for boyo, but my pepino and chia agua fresca is delightful and the proceeds go to possibly the saddest possible cause. We find a hoodie at a nearby kids resale and get out of Longview. Some other time.
We walk around Astoria after eating hippie food. I see a tall staircase and I want to climb it, but I am vetoed by the other folks in the car. Some other time. We walk around toy shops, piers, record stores. We go across the long bridge to Long Beach.
Lots of people in my various orbits have always been talking up the Sow Whess Ter Lodge in Seaview. We finally found a weekend availability in one of the cabins (not one of their vintage trailers, for better or worse). Pretty lovely place and scene, full of various beautiful hipsters from all over. I'm a little out of place as an Old, but it's still fun. Good records to borrow and play in the cabin, lots of Mississippi Records stuff. Toni Basil's Word of Mouth. The mosquitoes are bad, but not Iowa bad.
I catch a show in the lodge by Portland artist Bijoux Cone. The duo are trying to do everything all at once with multiple instruments and a film projector and everything breaks down and starts buzzing. I've been there, and I feel a weird nostalgia. They play drone with fuzz bass for the second set and it feels good.
The beach is great. It's a beach. My kid really likes it. Seeing people driving on the beach mystifies me, but we all kind of take a sick fascination in watching multiple people get stuck. I really like the long paved trails up the hill from the beach and regret not bringing my folding bike.
We head to Centralia next on the long lonely drive out on highway 6 through Pe Ell. We stop to get some drinks at the mart in that small town. The display on the cash register has a multilingual "Best Little Store in the Whole Wide World" or such on the screen in multiple languages that flashes up, just long enough for me to recognize that the Arabic isn't displaying correctly. I contemplate what would happen if I were to mention this, but end up deciding it might be better to keep it to myself.
